Hotaru Kobayashi
Hotaru Kobayashi (小林 螢, Kobayashi Hotaru) is a fictional character and primary protagonist in Kuro Arashi: The Black Storm. She is also the ministra magi to Yuuna Akashi. She is nothing else if not scatter brained. She can rarely remember the day of the week or where she put her pencil case. This doesn't mean she's forgetful in all fields. She can retain information and studied work very decently, it's just that she has a habit of misplacing her belongings. She can be a bit shy for the initial few minutes one knows her, but once you get her talking and prove you're interested, Hotaru is a down right chatterbox. Generally a nice person, Hotaru tries to be considerate of everyone's feelings and opinions. This isn't to say she likes everyone, just that she'll typically hide it or try to avoid someone she dislikes. Conversely, when she's come to consider someone a friend, she grows very attached to that person and values their opinion more than others. That goes to say that when she loses someone of that level of attachment, she can get very upset. The last things of note? Hotaru can be a bit hotheaded at times, especially on matter of personal opinions and viewpoints. If someone is trying to push themselves and their ideas onto her, she will bite right back. She also will take any challenge someone gives her and answer it with: "challenge accepted" and the stubbornness to prove them wrong. Biography Early Life Hotaru grew up to a normal life. She grew up in Tokyo proper to a loving house-wife mother and a businessman father. When she was six, they moved to the Mahora area for her father's work and she transferred into the Mahora Academy schools. She has since lived in the Mahora region and come to love the atmosphere around it. As a mundane, Hotaru went through school without the knowledge that many of the classmates around here were, in fact, magical in some way. Class 3-B With the new school year, Hotaru entered the new 3-B class, graduating from 2-B. In the same year as 3-A and not being very far from the aforementioned classroom, Hotaru had often heard of the 10-year-old teached of 3-A, Negi Springfield. She did not, however, see much of the teacher and spent much of the school year miding her own, playing a lot of video games and shirking her school work. In her limited exchanges with Negi, she came to call the other teacher "Springfield-sensei." Kyoto Field Trip During the field trip to Kyoto, Hotaru's class was mixed with 3-A. There, she met her future parther, Yuuna Akashi. While not blantantly throwing herself on the other girl, Hotaru did her best to get her flirtaions to "stick," though the other girl would eventually leave the train without openly returning Hotaru's attention. Leaving the train, Hotaru left to her room, where she left her belongings, save for her bow and quiver, and wandered down to the cafeteria to find something to eat. It was at the very moment that she entered the cafeteria that Konoka Konoe, who was in the cafeteria as well, was kidnapped by a renegade group of the Kansai Magic Association. Yuuna was the first to respond, pursuing the kidnapper into the lobby of the hotel, where she collided with a hotel staff luggage rack. She swiftly recovered and challenged the kidnapper, who summoned a bear and monkey demon to stall her. Negi, Hotaru, and Katerine Bayischerwald--who was along on the trip as a chaperone--arrived at Makie Sasaki's calling, and Hotaru and Katerine engaged the two demons, allowing Yuuna and Negi to slip past and continue their pursuit. The two tracked the kidnapper to the nearby train station, where Hotaru and Katerine caught up with them, then the four prepared themselves to engage an unknown enemy force. Negi, first to advance into the station, discovered that the floor had been trapped as a frictionless surface that prevented standard movement. As Negi used his wind magic to disperse the fine particles making up the trap, he was shot by a hidden sniper with a rubber bullet. The enemy then projected an ice barrier to bar the would-be rescuers' path, and Yuuna recognized that the semi-transparent ice would provide not only excellent cover but a good vantage point from which to locate the sniper. Utilizing a travel bag she had taken from the luggage rack, she threw a silver shaving gel can to fool the enemy into believing she was throwing a flashbang grenade, and then dove into cover behind the ice barrier when the enemy looked away to prevent the blindness associated with a flashbang device. From there, she located the position of the sniper and relayed that information back to Katerine, who eliminated the sniper with an expert shot from her MFAR-12C Magnum. Hotaru and Katerine set out to confront the kidnapper before they could escape aboard a train, while Yuuna stayed behind with the injured Negi. With the fighting over and her adrenaline levels abating, the memory of Makie's rejection began to return to Yuuna, causing her distress. Katerine and Hotaru returning without having rescued Konoka compounded Yuuna's negative mood, adding feelings of guilt and failure to the mix. Hotaru comforted Yuuna and made overtures of a potential future relationship, but Negi erased Yuuna's and Hotaru's memories of the events which had occurred, in line with Yuuna's father's wishes that she not be exposed to magic, and the fact that Hotaru was a mundane. This greatly angered Katerine, who promised that if Negi attempted to erase her memory again, she would cut him to pieces and mail him back to England. Following this, Hotaru remained unaware of the rest of the supernatural events that occurred during the field trip, and returned to Mahora Academy, once again, as a mundane. Mahora Festival : Main article: Mahorafest To be expanded. Powers and Abilities *'Archery Combat Specialist': Hotaru is shown to be very adept at archer, spending many of her days after school practicing the skill of kyūdō, or Japanese archery. She uses a Japanese yumi longbow, the shorter styled hankyū which is of namisun ''height. *'Pactio': 'Ignis-Fugio Arquitenens' (lit. Firefly Archer): Hotaru's pactio with Yuuna. Hotaru's artifact, named 'Radians Lucernae '(lit. ''Radiant Lantern), is a Japanese-styled lantern known as a chōchin which she weilds on a hooked stick similar in appearance to a shepard's crook. Within the lantern are a thousand firefly apparations which ignite into flame when Hotaru wills them to. They are a regenerative number and once ones is extinguished another one comes to being within the lamp. Appearances *''I Am ODST: Memoirs of a Student-Soldier'' *''Kuro Arashi: The Black Storm'' *''The Unsung War'' Category:Cleric Team Category:Kuro Arashi Protagonists Category:Project: Arashi